Manhattan Project National Historical Park at Hanford, Washington

It is tricky to get your arms around one of the newest units of the NPS-- tricky because it exists in three states, tricky because it entails challenging scientific information, tricky because the sites are not open to the public, and tricky because of its contested history. The three sites included in the Manhattan Project NHP – Hanford, Washington, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee-- commemorate one of the crowning achievements of the U.S. which ended the most horrific war in history as well as the places which created a weapon of mass destruction that could end human existence on earth.

On my western road trip through the National Parks, I stopped by the Hanford nuclear site. On the wind swept plains in a loop of the Columbia River, I drove past complexes of gray buildings surrounded by chain link fences and patrolled by security guards in SUVs. That was the closest I got to this historic place which helped create the Atomic Age. The site is not open to the public due to security and health concerns. I then visited the nearby Reach in Richland, a new museum about the area which combines exhibits on the natural beauty of the area with the Manhattan Project. This is a complex encounter.

Outside Area 300 at Hanford, WA. (Photo by Hunner)

In 1938, as the world descended into the Second World War, German physicists in Berlin split or fissioned the atom. This discovery spread through the world’s nuclear scientists like a prairie wild fire. These scientists knew that if the energy released from atomic fission was harnessed into a weapon, the destructive power would be immense. Afraid of that power in the hands of the Nazis, scientists in England scrambled to catch up with their own nuclear research.

After Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into the war, the United States organized the Allied efforts to create an atomic bomb under the Army Corps of Engineers. Many peoples and places contributed to the effort, but the three main sites were the main research and development laboratory at Los Alamos, the uranium enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, and the plutonium reactor at Hanford. We will explore Los Alamos and Oak Ridge in future postings, so let’s focus on Hanford’s contribution.

To split an atom and create an explosion, atoms need to be slightly unstable to begin with. Scientists identified two elements suitable for such work—Uranium 235 and Plutonium 249. Oak Ridge processed uranium ore into the rare isotope of Uranium 235 using massive centrifuges and microscopic filters. Making plutonium requires a different method since it is totally man-made. At Hanford, uranium ore was put into Reactor B, bombarded by neutrons, and like an alchemist’s transmutation, turned into a totally new element, plutonium.

To build a plant to make plutonium, the Army Corp of Engineers had several criteria for site selection. First, the ten by sixteen mile section of land had to be ten miles from the nearest road and twenty miles from the nearest railroad. To cool the reactor, the site needed 25,000 gallons of water per minute. To power the reactor, it needed at least 100,000 kilowatts. The mighty Columbia River with its massive flow and its hydroelectric power fit the bill. Once selected, 137,000 construction workers at the Hanford Engineering Works put up 1,200 buildings in addition to Reactor B.

Reactor B at Hanford, Washington (From exhibit at Reach Museum, Richland, WA.)

According to Reach museum docent and retired nuclear scientist Gary Busselman, the processing of uranium created eight pound rods which when irradiated at Reactor B, produced small spots of plutonium the size of a pen point. An atomic bomb needs around seventeen pounds of plutonium to explode. So, this nuclear process created a lot of radioactive waste. We’ll look at this legacy at the end of this blog.

The plutonium from Hanford was used in the “Fat Man” bomb. Scientists at Los Alamos worked on this unique weapon which imploded—where conventional explosives created shock waves which went inward, compressing the plutonium core, and creating the chain reaction which split atoms and released an incredible amount of energy. The Fat Man bomb was tested at the Trinity site in the New Mexico desert on July 16^th, 1945 with the equivalent force of eighteen tons of TNT. Fat Man detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9^th with about 40,000-50,000 dead from the explosion.

Photo of Fat Man Atomic Bomb (From Reach Museum, Richland WA.)

 Three days earlier, the US had detonated a uranium atomic bomb over Hiroshima with an immediate loss of life of 60,000 to 70,000 people. More died in the ensuing months in both cities from “radiation sickness.”  This one-two punch from a devastating new weapon forced the Japan to surrender. World War II killed 60,000,000 people, both soldiers and civilians, maybe more. Perhaps it took such a horrendous weapon to end the most horrific war in human history.

The end of World War II did not end Hanford’s mission. The Cold War with the Soviet Union and the resultant nuclear arms race depended on this site to continue to produce plutonium. In the 1960’s, Hanford churned out 2/3rds of the plutonium for our weapons’ stockpile. Atomic bombs became hydrogen weapons, some 1,000 more powerful than those used over Japan. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had the ability to commit Cliocide, the death of the muse of history and of humanity.

Exhibit at Reach Museum, Richland, WA (Photo by Hunner)

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has edged back from a nuclear Armageddon; however the environmental legacy of creating materials that are toxic for tens of thousands of years remain controversial. At Hanford, the radioactive waste was stored in 177 single shell underground metal tanks. The Reach’s exhibit on the Manhattan Project notes that 7,500,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste were stored in these tanks with 1,250,000 gallons of toxic sludge that has settled in the bottoms. The Department of Energy which manages all our nuclear facilities is actively removing this waste and remediating the poisonous material in the storage tanks. It is no easy feat.

Storage tanks for radioactive waste left over from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War
(From exhibit at the Reach Museum, Richland, WA.)

Part of the challenge is that plutonium remains toxic for 240,000 years. Other radioactive elements in the waste harmful to humans and other living things, such as Iodine 131, Strontium 90, and Cesium 137 have shorter toxic lives. Despite the rosy film at the Reach which concludes that the remediation is successfully cleaning up Hanford and returning it to a pristine natural reserve, some people  disagree. They note that the DOE has spent $19,000,000,000 only on waste removal from the leaking tanks without a spoonful actually being cleaned up. Leaks continue to make their way to the nearby Columbia River. A saying I heard several times is that ‘the solution to pollution is dilution.” As mentioned in previous blogs, the Columbia River is massive. I fear that its rolling on radioactively is not a good thing.

Waste remediation continues at Hanford (Photo by Hunner)

In November 2015, I participated in a Scholars’ Forum to help the NPS figure out how to interpret the Manhattan Project NHP. For two days, about twenty-five atomic historians, community members, staff from the NPS, the Department of Energy, and the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as two representatives from the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki discussed what should be included in the exhibits.

We discussed the key elements needed to tell the story of the Manhattan Project, including the scientific discoveries, the historical context of World War II, the destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear environmental legacy, and the Cold War and its aftermath. The representatives from the Japanese Atomic Cities were not so interested in discussing those questions that we atomic historians gnaw on—who did what to create these weapons? Did we need to use the bombs on Japan to force its surrender? Why two bombs? The Japanese delegation stated several times with forceful  dignity (and produced letters from their mayors saying the same thing) that they hoped that people would come away from their encounter with the Manhattan Project NHP concluding “Never Again.” Most of us at the table agreed with them. 

As with all new parks, the NPS is now developing an interpretive plan for the Manhattan Project parks which could take several years to finalize. In the meantime, the three communities are exploring their options. For example, Ellen McGhee at Los Alamos showed me a picture of a tunnel used right after World War II to store atomic bombs. She said this might be a place to install an exhibit.

The legacy of the Manhattan Project is manifold. It helped end World War II in August 1945, sparing numerous lives—both Allied military poised to invade Japan’s home islands as well as the Japanese who would resist the invasion. Nuclear weapons then entered the arsenal of some countries at large costs in funding and material. Even today, decades after the end of the Cold War, we spend billions on maintaining our nuclear stockpile. And finally, the environmental legacy of our nuclear production will continue to plague humans and the earth for thousands of years to come.

The Manhattan Project National Historical Parks became part of the NPS on Nov. 9, 2015 with a joint memorandum of understanding between the Departments of Interior and Energy. We will return to these parks in the future when I visit Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. 

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site at Vancouver, Washington

“Green Douglas firs where the waters cut through.

Down her wild mountains and canyons she flew.

Canadian Northwest to the ocean so blue,

Roll on, Columbia, roll on!

CHORUS: Roll on, Columbia, roll on.

Roll on, Columbia, roll on.

Your power is turning our darkness to dawn,

Roll on, Columbia, roll on.”

Words by Woody Guthrie, music based on "Goodnight, Irene" (Huddie Ledbetter and John Lomax)

The Columbia River rolls on -- as Woody Guthrie has noted. It dominates the landscape and nurtures the Native American civilizations which have lived in the region for thousands of years. It provides routes of transportation, sustenance, and spirituality to the peoples of the region. It is truly one of the mightiest rivers in the United States.

Europeans first entered the Pacific Northwest by ship in the late 18^th century. Then the new United States of America made an entry with the Corps of Discovery’s expedition. Led by Lewis and Clark (see previous blog), they explored the river in 1805-06. Once these explorers published their reports of the rich wildlife they found, particularly of the beaver and other fur pelts, trappers moved into the region. By the 1820s, the English Hudson Bay Company (HBC) established its presence on the Columbia River and eventually claimed 700,000 square miles in the American West, from British Columbia to Spanish California and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The HBC oversaw the “Columbian Department” with its two dozen forts and outposts and its 1,000 employees who gathered the abundant fur.

 

Walkway to Fort Vancouver with garden on left (Photo by Hunner)

Beaver reigned supreme in the fashions of Europe in the first half of the 19^th century (see the Grand Portage blog on April 4^th, 2016). To satisfy the lust for beaver, the HBC established its headquarters on the banks of the mighty Columbia River. Accessible by sea and servicing the inland water ways, Ft. Vancouver prospered for a while and then in an unintended way, opened up the region to the United States in the middle of the 19^th century.

Chief Factor Dr. John McLoughlin's House (Photo by Hunner)

The main administrator at Fort Vancouver, called the Chief Factor, managed the far flung activities of HBC’s Columbian Department. Perhaps HBC’s most important administrator was Dr. John McLoughlin who started with them as a physician and eventually became the Factor at Fort Vancouver. The site’s NPS brochure notes that his job “was to keep peace with the Indians, squeeze Americans out of the market, and firmly establish the British claim to all of Oregon.” However, the compassionate McLoughlin could not turn away the ragged Oregon Trail emigrants who straggled into his Fort and provided aid to these destitute travelers. As Fort volunteer Ron Cronin mentioned: McLoughlin “served the seeds of the removal of the British from here.” After his time as Factor, McLoughlin moved to Oregon City and became a U.S. citizen. The waves of U.S. farmers and merchants washed over both the HBC and the region’s Native Americans, neither who could do little to prevent American occupation and then ownership.

Volunteer Ron Cronin attends at the company store (Photo by Hunner)

As the first permanent European settlement in the Northwest, Ft. Vancouver was a lively mixture of many peoples, and the vigorous trade in furs drove many at the Fort. It was a diverse group of peoples—thirty-five different Native American tribes, Scottish, English, Americans, even a large contingent of Hawaiian Islanders. The multicultural country that the U.S. is today was mirrored in the collection of peoples who resided at Fort Vancouver in the 1840s. These different peoples used a language called Chinook Trade jargon to communicate. NPS volunteer Betty Meeks, who was stationed at the Surgeon’s House when I visited, spoke some phrases for me. She said: “Muck a muck some chug” translated into “Drink some water.”

Inside the palisades lived the British residents including the Factor, clerks, storekeepers, blacksmiths, and physicians. In the Village outside of the fort’s walls, up to 300 people of mixed ethnicities resided. An interesting contingent in the Village was the Sandwich (or Hawaiian) Islanders, who followed the British to Fort Vancouver because of their contact with HBC through their Pacific Ocean trading ships.

Houses in the Village with the Fort in the background (Photo by Hunner)

The Fort not only collected the furs from the vast hinterlands of the Columbian Department, it also provisioned the trappers and the sailors who worked for the HBC. Two ovens manned by four bakers cooked biscuits and hard tack for the fort’s 200 to 600 inhabitants as well as for the trappers, traders, and ship crews all involved with gathering and transporting the fur bounty from the Northwest to England.

Volunteer Dennis Torresdal hammers iron into an ax head
(Photo by Hunner)

Volunteer John Prutman demonstrates how a beaver trap works
(Photo by Hunner)

More Fort volunteers manned the blacksmith shop. John Prutsman kept up a lively patter as Dennis Torresdal fashioned an iron ax head taken red hot out of the coal fires. the smell of coal burning permeated parts of Fort Vancouver. Dennis quietly hammered and pumped the bellows while front man John demonstrated a beaver trap to a lady from east Texas. Other essential shops included the carpenter works which made items for the Fort, its ships, and the fur trade. The master volunteers at Fort Vancouver (as at most of the NPS sites I visited) bring life to these places. Without them, visitors like me would be less engaged and the NPS less meaningful.

An extensive garden outside the Fort’s walls (run today by volunteers) made the post self-sufficient. Fences surrounded the “English garden in the Wilderness” which grew peas, oats, barley, wheat, beans, squash, artichokes, apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, and other food. For the Fort’s residents as well as the 1,000 or so employees of the HBC in the Northwest, the garden provided welcome variety to the daily meal. Accounts by missionary Henry Spalding of this lush garden helped establish the agricultural attraction of Oregon. He praised the garden, writing about the “five acres laid out in good order stored with almost every species of vegetables, fruit, trees and flowers.”[1] Today’s Park Rangers claim that an apple tree near the Village is from the HBC period, and that it was the first such fruit tree in a region now known for its apples.

Part of the recreated Garden at the Fort (Photo by Hunner)

The British gave up its claim to Oregon with the U.S./British treaty of 1846 which made the international boundary at the 49^th parallel. The HBC moved its headquarters to Victoria, British Columbia. The U.S. Army took over the fort then and in 1866, the old Fort Vancouver burned. Barracks, officers’ quarters, post administrative buildings, and an air field were eventually added. In fact, in World War I, Fort Vancouver had the largest spruce lumber mill in the country to build bi-planes for action in France. The Army transferred their ownership of Fort Vancouver to the NPS on Memorial Day 2012.

The NPS begun its amazing reconstruction of Fort Vancouver in 1953. As with all such structures operated by the NPS, and all such places this that I have seen on my travels, upkeep is a constant issue. at the time of my visit, contractors were replacing many of the log palisades of the perimeter walls as well as the main gate into the Fort. The backlog of the maintenance for all of the 400 plus sites that the NPS operates is estimated at $12 billion. We have a lot of differences in our nation, and that is healthy for a democracy. I suspect we could agree to fund this backlog to preserve the historic and natural wonders of our republic.

Ongoing maintenance of the log structures in Oregon weather is a must. Here some of the logs in the palisades are replaced. (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site encompasses the main themes of Driven by History —migration, commerce, exchange. A global economy established itself early on in North America-- at Santa Fe, at Jamestown, at Grand Portage, and even at the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest. The British at Fort Vancouver tried to challenge the growing dominance of the United States in the region, but ultimately, they had to retreat to the island of Victoria to manage the fur trade. Having opened up the Northwest to European activities, the HBC could not secure its British monopoly and left the region to the United States.

Fort Vancouver was dedicated on June 19, 1948 as a National Monument and on June 30, 1961 as a National Historic Site.

View from the southwest bastion of the interior of Fort Vancouver (Photo by Hunner)

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[1] Exhibit text at Fort Vancouver NHS.

Lewis and Clark National Historical Parks and National Historic Trail from Illinois to Oregon and Washington

The Route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

The Columbia River 

The Columbia River has shaped the history of the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years. Ancient peoples, explorers ands settlers moving west, and atomic history, the Columbia River has seen it all.  In this post, we will focus on Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery who wintered at the mouth of the Columbia in 1805-1806. Future blogs will cover Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, the Bonneville Dam, and the Hanford Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

The Columbia RIver where Celilo Falls used to be (Photo by Hunner

The Columbia is the longest river in the Pacific Northwest, originating in Canada and flowing 1,243 miles (2,000 kilometers) to the Pacific Ocean. Long before Europeans arrived, people had canoed it, fished it, lived it. The Columbia broadly sweeps through canyons and gorges, its pounding waters gushing over waterfalls, and its salmon provides sustenance and spirit to the native peoples along its banks, all this  attest to its greatness.

Soon after humans migrated across the Bering Strait around 15,000 years ago, people started living along the Columbia River. Archeologists have found human remains that date back to 11,000 years ago, and in 1996, two college students discovered the skeleton of a 9,000 year old man on the banks of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington. This set off a bitter fight between scientists (who wanted to study the skeleton) and tribal members (who wanted the remains respectfully reburied). Legal maneuvers delayed the reburial of the Kennewick Man (aka The Ancient One) and allowed scientists to examine the bones in 2005. In 2015, scientists in Denmark determined through DNA testing that the Kennewick Man was indeed related to the tribes in the area, in particular to the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation—the only group that allowed the collection of their DNA. His remains are still stored at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington while the legal battles continue.

Map of Native American Tribes along the Columbia (http://www.critfc.org/member_tribes_overview)

The Native Americans along the Columbia River speak either the Sahaptian and Chinookan languages and include the Nez Perce, the Umatilla, the Warm Springs, the Colville, and the Yakama. The Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission stresses the importance of the river: “The people of these tribes share a common understanding that their very existence depends on the respectful enjoyment of the Columbia River Basin’s vast land and water resources. They believe their very souls and spirits were and are inextricably tied to the natural world and all its inhabitants. Among those inhabitants, none are more important than the millions of salmon that bring sustenance and prosperity to the region’s rivers and streams.”  The river brings salmon, and salmon brings life. These tribes have fished the Columbia for thousands of years and even today, continue to spear and net salmon on its banks. In fact, they eat ten times the average amount per person of salmon as the rest of the country.

For centuries past, the falls at the Dalles on the Columbia served as a Native American central meeting place for fishing, trading, and ceremonial renewal. Especially in the seasons when salmon ran up the river, native peoples gathered and brought goods from their regions to trade. As seen elsewhere with pre-contact Native Americans, a vibrant and sophisticated culture existed that had vastly different world views than those of the approaching Europeans.

Enter the Europeans

Europeans entered by ship in the late 18th century. Then after the turn of the 19^th century, the Corps of Discovery led by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis paddled down the Columbia and fulfilled their mission from President Thomas Jefferson—an exploration of the newly purchased Louisiana Territory.

President Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was fascinated with the western part of the continent and even considered sending a secret mission into what was then foreign territory in the late 18^th century. When Napoleon, strapped for cash from his wars in Europe offered the Louisiana Territory to the U.S. for $11,000,000, Jefferson jumped at the opportunity. After the purchase in July 1803, he ordered and actively helped organize an expedition. With interest, the final price was $23,000,000, still a bargain for over 800,000 square miles.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition

The Corps of Discovery had multiple goals—map the vast landscape, search for a northwest passage, ally the indigenous peoples to the United States and away from France and Britain, and document the flora and fauna of these lands for possible commercial use. Jefferson’s sent this charge to Lewis on July 4, 1803: "The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce."

Lewis and Clark
(From exhibit at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park)

Most of the thirty-three members of the Corps of Discovery were an elite group of the U.S. Army. The leaders, William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, had already served the country well. Both had fought in the Revolutionary War, and Lewis was Jefferson’s personal secretary. Lewis and Clark chose the men carefully for their many skills, and picked only one out of every 100 applicants. As a costumed interpreter at Fort Clatsop, Tom Wilson, told the Wilson Elementary School from Corvallis on the day I visited: “They were like the Navy Seals.” Clark also brought a slave, York, the first African American that Native Americans along the way had seen. The Corps would need their many skills and then some luck to fulfill their mission and safely return.

The Corps spent the winter of 1803-04 at Fort DuBois near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. They set off on May 14, 1804. They went up the Missouri in a small fleet of boats, which they rowed, poled, and pulled against the current. When the wind blew the right direction, they sailed. After five months and 1,600 miles of tedious travel, they wintered near the Mandan Indian villages where the temperature at times fell to 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. While at Fort Mandan, they hired Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian trader, as an interpreter. His young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea (who had been kidnapped five years earlier), and their infant son, Jean Baptiste, accompanied them. The Corps was now complete and ready for the treacherous journey ahead.

Sacagawea and Jean Baptiste(Photo by Hunner at Fort Clatsop NHP)

Having engaged and traded with the Mandan and other Plains tribes throughout the winter, the Corps left their fort in April 1805. They went up the Missouri River and its upper branches, struggling against the current into unchartered landscapes. Up the Rockies with all of their supplies and gear proved daunting and then, a miracle happened. Sacagawea ran into her family, who had given her up for lost. The Shoshone provided much needed food, horses, and a guide to send them over the Bitterroot Mountains.

Fort Clatsop

Near the mouth of the Columbia, after paddling down 600 miles of the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia River, Clark wrote in his journal: “Ocian in view. O! the joy!” Despite the euphoria of reaching their destination, the Corps huddled for six days at a cove of jagged rocks and steep cliffs in a raging storm. Rain pummeled them, whose Army issued clothes were rotting away from use and all the water. The surf crashed over their camp. Clark named the spot “that dismal little nitch.”

Visiting Clatsop Indians told Lewis and Clark that better camping and hunting lay to the south, so the Captains held council. In the film at Fort Clatsop, this council brought democracy to the Northwest as they voted on what to do, York included. Interpreter Tom has a different take. Lewis and Clark did consult with their men, but then the Captains decided, military style. They moved the camp across the mouth of the mighty Columbia to where the Clatsop people said elk existed. For starving men, food ruled. Over the winter, the Corps shot 144 elk.

The Corps lived in six small rooms at the fort —a room each for the three squads, one for their sergeants, one for Lewis and Clark, one for the Charbonneau family, and one for the kitchen and mess hall where York probably slept.

The reconstruted Fort Clatsop (Photo bt Hunner)

The Corps built Fort Clatsop in time for Christmas. Despite the joy of reaching the Pacific, the rotten meat and nakedness from worn out clothes set the tone. Over the four months that the Corps lived in the fort, they hunted, laid up food for the return journey (including a salt works which boiled seawater at a site fifteen miles to the south), and wrote in their journals. The total words in the Journals of Lewis and Clark are more than those in the Bible, and Clark’s maps were off by only forty miles over the four thousand that they covered.  The Corps left the fort on March 23, 1806 for the return to St. Louis.

Interpreter Tom Wilson talking to students at the fort (Photo by Hunner)

Tom Wilson serves Fort Clatsop in a vital role. When I first saw him, he had engaged students from the Wilson Elementary School with the history of Lewis and Clark. Tom was engaging, knowledgeable, and passionate about this history. His gift in relating the people and events of over 200 years ago to twelve and thirteen year olds came from his years teaching in the local middle school. He now spends a lot of time debunking myths: “We often write history the way we want it to be, not the way it was.” For example, during the trip west, the Corps at times struggled with hunger and knowing where to go. Native peoples often provided aid. Tom held his fingers close together and said that for a brief period of time, Jefferson envisioned the United States “co-habiting and trading with Native Americans.” 

The Corps of Discovery’s epic journey continues to capture the imagination. Their drive to get to the Pacific and back, to establish diplomatic relations with the tribes they encountered, and to document all they saw  opened up the west for the United States, but also changed forever the traditional ways of life for the Native Americans.  

Fort Clatsop National Memorial was authorized in 1958 and the some sites at the mouth of the Columbian River as consolidated into a National Historical Park in 2004. The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail was established in 1978. The replica of Fort Clatsop was built in 1955, destroyed by fire in October 2005, and rebuilt.

Thanks to Douglas and his insights as we visited these sites at the mouth of the mighty Columbia River.

Me pointing out the mispellings in Clark's Journal entry
(Photo by Douglas Hoffman)

The Oregon National Historic Trail

Oregon National Historic Trail from Independence, Missouri through Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.

On our Interstate highways, we easily drive as many miles in one day as the travelers along the Oregon Trail struggled to cover in a month. From Independence or Westport on the Missouri River to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, this 2,170 mile route challenged even the most hardy emigrants. The slow pace, the dusty and rocky road, the dangerous fords and high passes, the monotonous daily grind of hard work, the physical discomfort and death, all of these factors challenged the men, women, and children who set off for a new life in Oregon Country.

Map of the Oregon Trail (www.historyglobe.com)

Native peoples have lived in this region for over 10,000 years. By the turn of the 19^th century, some of the tribes who called it home included the Nez Perce, the Walla Walla, the Cayuse, and the Warm Springs. Europeans first became attracted to the land for its fur, and trappers and traders working for the English Hudson’s Bay Company started taking beavers in the area in the early 1800s. In response to the rich trade, the Hudson’s Bay Company established an outpost at Fort Vancouver in 1824. Missionaries followed the mountain men, and then farmers sought the fertile Willamette Valley. By 1830s, the first settlers arrived and in 1843, more than 1,000 emigrants braved the six month journey. More soon followed. In 1852 alone, 50,000 emigrants traveled the Oregon Trail. From 1840 to 1880, approximately 300,000 people made the trek. This transformed the region.

Nez Perce trading with Mountain Men (James Ayers Studios)

Reasons to Emigrate

Why leave the U.S. in the 1840s? A financial panic in 1837 devastated the economy, and disease (especially malaria and cholera) plagued the Mississippi River Valley. Oregon boosters back east extolled the virtues of the Willamette Valley with one man claiming that pigs ran around fully cooked with knives and forks already stuck in them, ready to eat. To such fanciful tales, those looking for an easier life flocked to the Oregon Trail starting points on the Missouri River.

Oregon Country was contested territory, lived in by Native Americans, and claimed by both the British and the Americans. Even before the 1846 treaty with Britain established U.S. ownership, emigrants started pouring into the territory. The massive influx of European Americans disrupted tribal communities and lives. Exchanges occurred as Native Americans traded with and aided the travelers, sometimes giving them salmon, their first taste of that nutritious and sacred fish. Without such aid, some pioneers would have died.

The Indians also protected their ancestral lands and ancient ways of life, sometimes with force. Treaties with the United States, sometimes abided by, sometimes not, forced them onto reservations. Massacres happened, like at the Whitman mission in 1847, and battles occurred, like with the Nez Perce’s attempt to escape forced relocation onto a reservation in 1877. Their epic 1,170 miles (1,880 km) flight across four states is preserved by the Nez Perce National Historic Trail. The legacy of contact and conquest continues to impact the native peoples of the region.

Traveling on the Oregon Trail

From the dairies of the emigrants, we learn of their trail hardships. One woman wrote that she had passed twenty-one graves that day. Death came on the trail in many ways. Some died from accidental gunshot wounds, others from being run over by a wagon. Deadly illnesses like cholera swept through the parties, since water holes were scarce at times and polluted by earlier sick people or animals.  Attacks by Native Americans defending their lands or hunting grounds did happen; however, few pioneers died from such exchanges. In a study by trail historian Robert Munkres of sixty-six trail diaries written before 1860, he found nine eyewitness accounts of hostile attacks.[1]

Trail travel tested everyone. Emigrants gathered at Independence or Westport near Kansas City in the spring. Using techniques perfected on the Santa Fe Trail for prairie traveling (see the posting from May 16), most trains left in late April or May. By then, the prairies had started to green up with fodder for their draft animals, and the land had dried out from the winter and spring precipitation.

Traveling on the Oregon Trail was not like driving the Interstate today. The historic trails were braided, with multiple routes to a destination. Since a wagon train might have up to 100 wagons, they sometimes traveled four or five abreast. Or a group might split off and seek an alternative route which they heard was better. Deep ruts of the historic trails still exist, carved into the landscapes by the iron rimmed wheels and plodding hooves of draft animals. At those places today, often at isolated sites with a stiff wind bending the sage brush, I can still hear the creak of the wagons, the groan of the overloaded axles, and the complaining moans of the oxen. At places like this, the past comes alive.

Wagon on the trail rut near the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Baker City, Oregon
(Photo by Hunner)

The best animals to pull wagons loaded with 2,000 pounds of goods were oxen, slow but hardier than horses or mules. For the six month journey, families stocked up with 200 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of bacon, and other food essentials. They also loaded up their household goods like furniture and stoves, clothes, and farm tools and seed stock.

Exhibit at the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Baker City, Oregon
(Photo by Hunner)

From Kansas, the trail went through southern Nebraska along the Platte River, past Chimney Rock and Scottsbluff and then into Wyoming. Fort Laramie offered respite, supplies, and a sense of protection from the imposing prairies.  As the Rocky Mountains loomed to the west, the next major point was South Pass, a surprisingly gentle path through the mountains. Once over South Pass, the emigrants passed the point of no return; however, the hardest part of the trail lay ahead.

Winding through the mountains of the West proved hard. Long stretches without water (and when found, might be tainted by dead animals), clouds of dust thrown up by the many wagons in a train, graves on the side of the trail, all these wore down the travelers. Daily routines started before daybreak with cooking the day’s food using dried cow chips for fuel, taking care of the livestock, yoking the oxen up, then walking fifteen or twenty miles -- often until dark. Few people rode in the wagons to avoid burdening the oxen further. Next day, repeat the same routine -- for six months or more.

Worn out travelers on the Oregon Trail (Photo at National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Baker City, Oregon)

I caught the Oregon Trail in eastern Idaho at Soda Springs. I jumped on and off Interstate 84 through Idaho and Oregon at places like Glenn’s Ferry where the emigrants first encountered the Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia River. Glenn’s Ferry was a dangerous ford of the Snake River in central Idaho, and even though three islands aided the crossing at Glenn’s Ferry, most travelers could not swim. They caulked their wagon beds, forced their reluctant livestock to plunge into the cold waters, and prayed. 

Glen's Ferry across the Snake River. The trail angles down from left to right on the other side of the river. (Photo by Hunner)

Some avoided such fords and stayed on a more difficult route south of the Snake. Either way, travelers climbed steep hills and then descended in heavily loaded wagons with logs chained to their axles as brakes. From here to trail’s end at Oregon City, the Snake and Columbia Rivers guided the weary travelers. Getting closer to the Willamette Valley, the travelers faced more suffering over the rugged terrain of the Blue Mountains, the Cascades, and the threat of the coming cold weather.

Roadside exhibit at Celilo Falls, Washington (Photo by Hunner)

The treacherous falls at Celilo and the Dalles on the Columbia presented challenges to all of the travelers. On the Columbia River at the Dalles, the Oregon and the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trails merge. We will explore the Lewis and Clark Trail in an upcoming posting. The final section of the Oregon Trail entailed either floating down the massive and tricky Columbia River or slogging on the rough Barlow Road through the forest around Mt. Hood. Dr. John McLoughlin, the Factor at Fort Vancouver for the British Hudson Bay Company, often sent boats to the rapids at the Dalles to ferry the ragged travelers to the outpost. We will return to McLoughlin, Fort Vancouver, and the Hudson Bay Company in the next blog.

As a trail of migration, the Oregon Trail (and the California, Lewis and Clark, and Mormon Trails which shared parts of the same routes) opened the West for settlement. As I sped near the Oregon Trail on Interstate 84 in Idaho, Oregon, and on Highway 114 in Washington, I easily crossed rivers and canyons, swiftly climbed the steep grades, and coasted down the other side. I marveled at those who walked the 2,000 miles, facing months of hard travel, privation, illness, and death. These hardy families of farmers and merchants established vibrant communities on the West Coast. It is an epic story of determination, grit, and cultural exchanges that helped make the United States what it is today.

Congress approved and President Carter signed into law the 2,170 mile long Oregon National Historic Trail on November 19, 1978.

Wagons at the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Baker City, Oregon
(Photo by Hunner)

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[1] Website for the Oregon-California Trail Association: www.octa-trails.org/learn/trail-facts.

Minidoka National Historic Site, near Jerome, Idaho

Minidoka National Historic Site

The reconstructed watchtower at Minidoka NHS (Photo by Hunner)

In south central Idaho, the NPS is restoring a field of dreams. At the site of a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans and Japanese residents at Minidoka, NPS staff and volunteers have recently built a baseball field among the worn buildings, the collapsed root cellar, and the crumbling concrete pads that once housed 10,000 “evacuees” who were in fact prisoners of the US government. From August 1942 to October 1945, Japanese and Japanese-Americans from the exclusion zone of Alaska, Washington, and Oregon lived in tar paper buildings and created a community which became self-sufficient. And played baseball.

I visited Minidoka on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. I was surprised by the number of visitors to this isolated rural place. Cars of local people drove up, a group on rugged ATVs stopped by, and many listened to the two Japanese-Americans who had come to remember their past on this weekend of remembrance. Stan Iwakiri had brought his family to visit the site which he does annually. I caught them just as they were leaving. He was three months old when his family got off a train at nearby Eden, rode a bus to Hunt Camp as it was called, and lived for the duration of the war. His father was a logger in the Seattle area and because of Executive Order 9066 signed by President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, got caught in the sixty mile corridor along the Pacific coast  which excluded people of Japanese ethnicity. At the entrance to the historic site, Stan pointed to black lava rock ruins of two adjacent buildings. He said: “One was the police station and the one next door the welcome center.” We exchanged a look, and then we both laughed.

Stan Iwakiri who arrived at Minidoka at the age of 3 months with his family
(Photo by Hunner)

The other Japanese American citizen there on Memorial Sunday asked for anonymity. She was born at Minidoka and invited me to follow her and her friends to the Honor Roll, Block 22, and the baseball field, which she had helped rebuild that weekend.

Minidoka was one of ten War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps used to carry out the government's system of detention of persons of Japanese ethnicity, mandated by Executive Order 9066. The Order eliminated the constitutional protections for citizens of due process and violated the Bill of Rights. Two-thirds of the 120,000 persons of Japanese descent incarcerated in American concentration camps were American citizens, an act that reflected decades of anti-Japanese discrimination and then war time propaganda.

WRA camps during World War II 

The WRA used Bureau of Reclamation land for this camp. As an instant city, Minidoka by the end of the war was the seventh largest city in Idaho. The Minidoka Relocation Center was a 33,000 acre site with more than 600 buildings. In the spring of 1942, the Morrison-Knudsen Company from Boise received a contract worth $4,626,132 to put up thirty-five residential blocks, each block with twelve barracks. Each 20 x 120 foot barrack had six rooms for families or groups of individuals. Each residential block had a mess hall, a recreation hall, and an H-shaped lavatory building with toilets, showers, and a laundry. The small city also had a 197 bed hospital, a library, two elementary schools, a junior high and a high school with 1,225 students, stores, barber and beauty shops, a watch repair shop, a fish market, sport teams, a recreation hall shared by churches, swing bands, and movies, and two fire stations manned by the internees. Additionally, to provide for the 10,000 internees, the camp had seventeen warehouses, a motor repair shop, and administrative offices. It was in operation from August 1942 until October 1945.

School children at Minidoka (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/)

Wrenched from their homes on short notice and allowed only one or two suitcases, many of these U.S. citizens were in shock when they arrived in Minidoka. As one internee related: “When we first arrived here we almost cried, and thought that this is the land God had forgotten. The vast expanse of nothing but sagebrush and dust, a landscape so alien to our eyes, and a desolate, woebegone feeling of being so far removed from home and fireside bogged us down mentally, as well as physically.”[1]

Unloading from a bus at Minidoka (Courtesy http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/)

Amazingly, by the fall of 1943, Minidoka was self-sufficient in food production, and even sent excess produce to other WRA camps. The people at Camp Hunt turned a sage brush desert into a cornucopia which that year produced 979,770 pounds of potatoes, 79,325 pounds of carrots, 101,814 pounds of cabbage, and turned out 1,000 eggs a day. The next year, Minidoka harvested 7.3 million pounds of produce. The elders at the camp told others “Shikataga nai,” meaning “There is nothing we can do about it so make the best of it.”

Some of the men in camp enlisted and fought in Europe. These soldiers are recognized at the Honor Roll. Erected among the lava rocks that held a victory garden, the woman who was born at Minidoka showed us the Honor Roll. It was built to acknowledge the young men and women from the camp who served in the military. Despite their and their families’ incarceration at home, Japanese Americans enlisted and fought in Europe and saw some of the bloodiest action in the Italian campaign. In fact, Minidoka had the highest percentage of internees from the ten camps to serve in the military. The Japanese American U.S. Army unit, the 442^nd  Regiment, also earned the most medals of any unit its size with 9,486 Purple Hearts. The Honor Roll at the entrance to Minidoka pays tribute to those who fought and died for a country who had incarcerated them.

The Honor Roll (Photo by Hunner)

One of the ways to make the “best of it” was through playing baseball. Baseball and softball offered an escape for some of the over 10,000 people who lived at Minidoka. Samuel O. Regalado's book Nikkei Baseball states:  ”To the evacuee, sport was not an ‘innocuous aspect of life’; it was an essential component to their mental and emotional survival in the camps.” Local baseball coverage in the camp newspaper rivaled stories about their fellow Japanese Americans in combat.

Newly rebuilt Baseball diamond (Photo by Hunner)

Soon after they arrived, internees started playing ball. Fields sprang up around the Minidoka camp, and youngsters and adults of both sexes hit the diamonds. The camp paper, the Minidoka Irrigator, reported on September 11, 1943: "Yup! Old man baseball reigns supreme among our dads and have helped make life in this camp more pleasant for him. Without the game, he'd be lost and idleness would reign supreme instead of baseball. They also did a swell job in providing some exciting games for us and their sportsmanship and spirit were tops. Hats off to our 'old men’."  That same month, the newspaper reported that young women had organized into softball teams representing their home towns of Portland and Seattle and played against each other. The newly rebuilt baseball diamond recalls an essential part of life at Camp Hunt and evokes its own field of dreams.

Incarcerating U.S. citizens because of their ethnicity violated their constitutional rights. Targeting any citizens, whether they are European-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Native-Americans, Mexican-Americans, or Muslim-Americans denies their rights and harms our country. The diversity of the United States makes us stronger, not weaker, and succumbing to demagoguery because of a national emergency or a political campaign undermines our Constitution and our nation’s ideals. Our best idea, and we have had many, is the declaration that all men are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To subvert those rights threatens our best idea.

Minidoka National Historic Site was created in 2001.

Minidoka's FIeld of Dreams (Photo by Hunner)

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[1] Emory Andrews Collection.

Arches National Park and Golden Spike National Historic Site

Arches National Park, Moab, Utah

Delicate Arch (Photo by Hunner)

I usually write histories from documents, oral history interviews, or archaeological works, you know human stuff. At Arches NP, history begins 300 million years ago. The geological history is etched in the landscape itself where 2,000 arches exist within the park boundaries. Geological time manifests itself at the Park.

Creating the Arches

Hundreds of millions years ago, this area lay under a vast sea. Along the shores and under the waves, sand dunes existed which when buried, formed sandstone, petrified sand dunes. Oceans covered the area, then evaporated, returned, evaporated, depositing thick layers of salt seventy five million years ago. A mountain range one mile thick grew over the salt deposits. The salt flowed under the earth and uplifted some of the land so that horizontal sandstone flipped ninety degrees and became vertical ranges. Around sixty million years ago, the Colorado River eroded the upper layers of that mountain range and exposed the now vertical sandstone, which when eroded further, emerged as the fins which eroded further to make the arches. Water and wind wore down the softer stone to form dramatic landscapes, not just of arches, but also balanced rocks, pinnacles, skyscrapers of red and tan structures. Water, time, and gravity made the arches.

Sandstone fins where arches come from (Photo by Hunner)

Perhaps another powerful force played a role. When salt is hydrated, it forms crystals which exert enormous pressure on anything around it. Research in New Mexico on the effect of salt on adobe buildings shows its destructive capability. The Arches Visitors’ Center exhibit notes that “both mechanical and chemical forces attack the weaker spots and begin the process which forms arches.” Perhaps salt’s expansive forces also helped carve the landscape.

This is a dynamic process. Again from the exhibit: “What you see now is the result of millions of years of gradual change. Some of the changes have been dramatic. Mountains have come and gone. Oceans gave way to deserts. The changes occurred slowly, have not stopped, and will continue as erosional forces reshape the land.” The arches we see today might collapse under its own weight, as the Wall Arch did in 2008. Like all living things, arches die. In the words of the NPS, this is a “never ending story of deposition, uplift, collapse, and erosion.”

Hiking the Arches

I spent the Thursday before Memorial Day, the busiest weekend of the year, at the Park. Almost 1.5 million people visited it in 2015. I hiked up to Delicate Arch, a three mile roundtrip that traversed the desert landscape, across the red sandstone slick rock, and around a narrow ledge hugging a cliff. The dramatic arch rose above a basin and tottered over a cliff with the snow covered La Sal Mountains as a back drop. Delicate Arch serves as the iconic image of Utah on its license plates.

Hiking over slickrock to Delicate Arch (Photo by Hunner)

I then drove to Devil’s Garden and hiked a seven mile round trip trail past several distinctive arches, including Landscape Arch and Double O Arch. I walked past collapsed arches and nascent arches, along the yard wide top of a fin with steep drops on each side, past blue varnished cliffs, and saw an arch whose span was as long as a football field and another where a small arch lay under a larger one.

The 100 yard span of the Landscape Arch (Photo by Hunner)

The over and under Double O Arch (Photo by Hunner)

Visitors from around the world converge on Arches National Park to wander in awe through this magical landscape. Although Driven by History focuses on human history, in my travels, I can’t pass up hitting some of the stunning parks of natural beauty that are jewels in the NPS crown.

Arches National Monument, designated by President Hoover in April 1929 contained about 4500 acres. President Roosevelt expanded it to 34,000 acres, and then President Johnson doubled its side in 1968. Congress voted it a National Park in 1971 with 76,000 acres.

Golden Spike National Historic Site

The replica of No. 119 making a run past the visitors' center at Golden Spike NHS. Engineer Tom Brown is waving from the cab.  (Photo by Hunner)

Next I drove to Golden Spike NHS near Corinne, Utah. In 1869, at this place, a vast continent-wide engineering and construction effort connected the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and helped unite the nation after the Civil War. Thousands of workers graded a path 1,800 miles across prairies and mountains, laying wood ties and iron rails, and completing the first transcontinental railroad line. As you enter the visitors’ center, these words greet you: “Inscribed here, amid the sagebrush and bedrock of northern Utah is a tale of grand dreams and brute work, greed and glory.” Brute force, daring engineering, and federal financing muscled the railroad across the continent.

The driving of the golden spike on May 10, 1869 culminated almost four decades of industrial progress. The earliest railroads ran in England in the first decades of the 19th century. Soon after the railroad came to the United States, people started dreaming of a “Pacific Railroad.” Embracing such public opinion, the U.S. House of Representatives in 1850 called for a Pacific Railroad that would "cement the commercial, social, and political relations of the East and the West," as well as providing a "highway over which will pass the commerce of Europe and Asia." Railroads fueled the industrial revolution in the 19^th century.

While many voices advocated for a Pacific Railroad, some objected. Primarily, they did not support the federal government financing internal improvements; however for railroad companies to build a route over hundreds of miles, government support proved essential. With laissez-faire capitalism saying hands off to the government, some of the public did not want federal support of such a project. The transcontinental railroad changed this.

Transcontinental Railroad Route (www.ducksters.com)

Building the Pacific Railroad

In 1862, the U.S. Congress loaned $50 million to the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad companies to start construction. The Pacific Railway Act of 1864 loaned another $50 million to the railroad companies. These subsidies lent the railroads $16,000 for each mile constructed east of the Rockies and west of the Sierras, $32,000 for each mile between the mountain ranges, and $48,000 for each mile in the mountains.

The 1864 act also granted that for every mile laid, railroad companies received ten sections or ten square miles of land extending out from the main lines. As historian Richard White calculated, the Union Pacific received the square mileage of New Hampshire and New Jersey combined, while the Central Pacific’s take equaled the land mass of Maryland. In total, railroads around the country received 131,230,358 acres of land grants from the United States.

Railroad construction on the Pacific route went full throttle after the end of the Civil War. Often using military men as managers who had built or repaired railroads during the war, both companies raced to lay more track than the other to secure more government subsidies. The Central Pacific had the tougher route. Almost immediately after leaving Sacramento, the route climbed up the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and its progress was slowed as tunnels and steep switchbacks slowed their efforts. The Central Pacific only reached the top of the Sierras in July 1867 and a year later had descended the high mountains to link up with its Nevada construction. Much of the material for the Central Pacific had to come by sea around the tip of South America and then from San Francisco or Oakland by train to the rail head. With labor scarce, the Central Pacific hired 11,000 Chinese to grade the land, dynamite the cuts and tunnels, construct the bridges and culverts, lay the track, and hammer home the rails. Without the Chinese, the Central Pacific section of the Pacific Railroad would have taken at least twice as long as four years.

The meeting of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads at Promontory Summit 

(Courtesy of http://up150.com/timeline/)

Here are some statistics from the visitors’ center exhibit: once the monumental feat of leveling a road bed by hand and draft animal was finished, it took 400 iron rails for a mile of track. A rail was secured to wooden ties by 24 spikes. Each spike took three blows to nail it in. Thus, each mile of track took 12,000 blows of a sledge hammer. Multiply this over 1,800 miles.

Another interesting part of the interpretation at Golden Spike NHS is the replicas of the two famous locomotives which met here in 1869. The Central Pacific’s Jupiter and the Union Pacific’s No. 119 operate in the summer and make short runs along the track outside of the center. The sounds of the whistle, the clacks of the wheels on the rails, the smell of the coal smoke, and the chuffing of the moving steam locomotive is a glorious experience.  

Golden Spike's Chief of Interpretation Justin Glasgow talking to the Mountain Valley Elementary School in front of No. 119
(Photo by Hunner)

Transforming the Nation

The transcontinentals transformed the role of the federal government in using public monies to support works for private gain. They also changed the way we experienced time and space. Prior to trains, people often measured time by how far one could travel in a day. Now distances that had taken months to traverse were covered in days.

Railroads also redefined space as they privileged what lands were important. Many established towns bypassed by the railroad withered while nearby newly created towns blessed by a station thrived. Finally, lands distant from markets now were connected to regional and even national and international businesses and customers. The railroads enabled farmers, miners, lumbermen, and other producers to send their goods across vast distances to markets.

As Justin Glasgow, Chief of Interpretation at Golden Spike mentioned, this spot transformed the U.S. from a regional economy into a world power. Justin also added that railroads ignited the protest movements at the end of the 19^th century. In reaction to the monopolies and high transportation costs of the railroads, discontent farmers organized the Populist Reform movement which eventually led to Progressivism at the beginning of the 20^th century. Justin concluded that railroad culture and language are still with us. For example, the national time zones we use today came about in 1883 to facilitate the railroads’ moving goods and people quickly across our vast lands.

The Golden Spike NHS preserves the monumental effort of a nation reeling from the Civil War to reinvent itself as a united country again. Tying together the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts and the lands in between, putting its industrial might to work, and building what many considered impossible, the transcontinental railroad that joined at Promontory Summit in 1869 transformed the United States perhaps as much as the Civil War. The Golden Spike NHS was created in 1965.

Visitors can auto tour and hike some of the old cuts leading up to Promontory Summit. While hiking out to the Big Fill several miles east of the headquarters, I encountered a rattlesnake near the sign below. we both quickly went our own ways.

Roadbed to UP's Big Trestle over Spring Creek Ravine. Central Pacific's Big FIll of the ravine off to the left. Sign on right is where I spooked the rattlesnake. (Photo by Hunner)

Next on the Driven by History road trip, I will visit Minidoka NHS where Japanese American citizens were imprisoned during World War II. What’s your favorite Park? Please let me know.